Results tagged “fastfoodnation”

Not long after their triumphant The Threepenny Opera (and the not-so-triumphant Wall Street crash of 1929), Bertolt Brecht and his close collaborator Elisabeth Hauptmann began assembling Saint Joan of the Stockyards from the spare parts of Happy End, the critically maligned follow-up to Threepenny (both with music by Kurt Weill). The story was heavily influenced by Brecht’s first dip into Marxism, not to mention Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan and Major Barbara. Set in 1920s Chicago, their version of Joan of Arc illustrates, from the workers’ vantage point, a crisis in the meat market brought on by the machinations of one Pierpont Mauler, who treats his laborers even worse than today (see Fast Food Nation). Rising up to oppose him is the sincerer-than-thou Joan Dark, a soup-and-Bible dispenser for the Black Straw Hats, a Christian charity. When Joan's attempts to arbitrate between Mauler and the locked-out workers runs afoul of her superiors in the Straw Hats, she’s cast out among the huddled masses, where she struggles to discern religion’s place in the workers’ battle for justice. (You can probably guess where Brecht thinks it belongs.)

Yeesh, there sure are a lot of new movies out this weekend. Choose wisely and you will be well rewarded.

- The Meatrix folks are at it again. This time, in The Meatrix 2 1/2, Moopheus and the gang expose the many dangers of industrial slaughterhouses. The short is produced by Sustainable Table and is designed to help promote the upcoming release of the movie version of Fast Food Nation.

Foodies attack the silver screen! In today's Times Arts & Leisure section, the long history and current feast of food in film is given another look. Would there have even been a Big Night if not for the food? In the coming months, Russell Crowe, the first person we think of when the phrase "good taste" coming up, will star as a man who inherits a vineyard and Nora Ephron is working on an adaptation of Julie & Julia, the Julie Powell book that came from her blog. Fast Food Nation has been filmed, too, and, there will be acompetitive eating movie, All You Can Eat, to add some low-to-middle-brow enjoyment to all the wineries and roux.

SFist commeters pose for before and aftershocks when the mayor commemorates a 1906 earthquake...at 4:30 in the morning. A hot tip on the Chronicle vending machines comes in and the SFist war correspondent risks life and limb to post this dispatch from the frontlines.

Spiderman 3 Director Sam Raimi announced that lanky 70’s Show guy has just joined Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunset in the cast of Spider-Man 3. "Topher Grace is an extraordinarily talented actor," said Raimi, "and will be perfect for the complexities of the role we are developing."

We've read "Fast Food Nation." We've seen "Super Size Me." And, we've been queasy about fast food monoliths like McDonald's, Burger King and Taco Bell ever since. But, does fast food always have to mean bad food? (Not that Mickey D's fries aren't tasty - It's just that a large portion contains 520 calories, with 220 of those calories coming from fat.)

What's really wrong with processed foods? I enjoy them for the convenience and, I’ll admit it, the taste. If it was really so bad for me, would the U.S. government allow it to be sold everywhere?